The third weekend of June has been optimistically designated a time of national silence and inward spiritual reflection by the Christian Retreat Association. To mark Annual Quiet Day, this week’s choice of picture is Salvator Rosa’s impressively taciturn Self-Portrait. Its theme might be described as the importance of knowing when to shut up. The artist stands before us, wearing the cap and gown of a man of learning, his right hand resting on a stone tablet into which has been carved a Latin epigram. “Aut tace aut loquere meliora silentio” is the message which it proclaims. “Either be silent or say something better than silence.”

Silhouetted against a livid sky, dark with the threat of rain, the tight-lipped young man looks as though a storm is brewing inside him too. A challenging, almost scornful expression animates his gaunt and handsome face. His dark hair is matted and he has evidently not shaved for a few days. The suspicion lurks that he has taken some care over his tousled and stubble-chinned look. For all its apparent informality, it still comes over as a pose: the image of proud negligence, struck with a flourish. Painted in the mid-seventeenth century, Rosa’s Self-Portrait  is a notably early depiction of the artist as angry young man. His dark and urgent eyes seem to look ahead to later centuries: to the dandyish dishevelment of the Romantic poet; the insolent, anti-establishment stance of the modernist; the self-conscious sulkiness of the scowling rock star. The temptation to see him as a man ahead of his time is understandably strong.

Salvator Rosa was, in fact, one of the most intriguing and mercurial characters of the seventeenth century. He painted portraits, altarpieces, themes from classical mythology, vanitas pictures and scenes of witchcraft which led John Ruskin,...

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